We’re pleased to see the huge solar energy project in northeast San Bernardino County get under way.

BrightSource Energy held a groundbreaking ceremony recently to celebrate the start of construction of its 392-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.

That’s a lot of wattage, enough to power about 140,000 homes during the peak sunlight hours of the day.

And it will mean a lot of construction jobs in the county, up to about 1,200, with projected total wages of about $250 million. Bechtel Corp., BrightSource’s general contractor, signed a labor agreement with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California and the Building and Construction Trades Council of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties to provide skilled workers for the project.

The complex, on 3,500 acres about five miles southwest of Primm, Nev., will have three separate plants built in phases between now and 2013.

It’s not easy to bring a project like this online, with all the approvals that have to be obtained. BrightSource has agreed to buy and set aside an additional 12,000 acres of land to mitigate its project’s encroachment on desert tortoise habitat. The company, in an agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, has hired biologists to find tortoises on project land and relocate them, at great expense.

San Bernardino County officials are not happy with the size of the set-aside for Ivanpah, noting that such large mitigation requirements will reduce the number of potential solar projects in the Mojave Desert.

True, but the desert habitat itself is a tremendous resource that must be preserved as well.

BrightSource has estimated that the Ivanpah project will generate $400 million in local and state tax revenues over the plant’s 30-year life.

When complete, Ivanpah will be the world’s largest solar thermal project – but not for long. Several Mojave Desert solar energy projects have been approved in the past two months, including a massive, 1,000-megawatt complex near Blythe in Riverside County. Another project approved in September is the 250-megawatt Abengoa Mojave Solar 1 plant near Hinkley in San Bernardino County.

These projects are good for the future of California, from a renewable energy perspective and from a green jobs perspective.

Bring on the electricity. Bring on the jobs.

We’re saddened by the passing of Larry Hernandez of Upland, a frequent contributor to this page. Mr. Hernandez, 53, died Oct. 26. He was a member of the Inland Valley Democratic Club, a history buff, a capital-L Liberal, and pushed more than a few readers’ buttons with his letters and points of view. Our condolences to his family.